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Why don’t aircraft black boxes upload data in real-time?

From economy to technicality, the short answer is it's just not worth it

This file photo from Tuesday May 3, 2011 by France's air accident investigation agency, the BEA, shows the flight data recorder from the 2009 Air France flight that went down in the mid-Atlantic. (AP Photo/BEA, Johann PESCHEL) Photo: (AP Photo/BEA, Johann PESCHEL)

As dozens of aircraft and sea vessels search for a missing Malaysian jet liner, armchair investigators are already trying to figure out why it’s so necessary to find the flight data recorder — also known as the black box — at all.

In the age of world-wide cellular data connectivity, orbiting space stations and gigabit internet connections, why do airplanes just record such crucial information locally instead of uploading it to a cloud server in real-time?

So we're busy implementing WiFi on planes and noone thought it would be a good idea to have the black box upload data to the web too?

When flight data recorders are found, they could have been freezing on a mountain side, under the immense pressure at the bottom of the ocean, burning in the smoldering wreckage of a crash or in any other number of awful conditions.

The benefits of uploading the data to another location are obvious: In the event of a crash or lost aircraft, the flight data recorder information would already be in the hands of investigators. They would already know altitude, orientation, GPS and any mechanical problems aboard the aircraft. That information, combined with radar data from the ground, could go a long way to locating lost aircraft or helping injured passengers and crew in an emergency.

So as commercial aircraft make high-speed wi-fi available to passengers in the cabin, why don’t they upload black-box information in real-time to a server somewhere back on the ground?

Well, in some ways, it’s already happening. It’s just not as robust as uploading the full FDR data.

All aircraft have a system called ACARS, which stands for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. That system was introduced in 1978 to share crucial aircraft information with people on the ground in real-time. But it only sends the most basic of data like which doors are closed, location, altitude and any custom messages the flight crew feel are necessary (like unruly passengers).

Compared to the wealth of data picked up by the flight data recorders, it’s almost nothing. The average flight data recorder used on commercial aircraft have between 4GBand 128 GB of recording space, and that’s only for the past few hours of flight time. To constantly stream all the information a flight data recorder collects to the ground in real-time could be up to 12GB of data per aircraft per flight.

With an average of 8,000 planes in the sky at any given time, the amount of bandwidth required to transmit the data would be astounding. But still, it wouldn’t be impossible.

But that’s not the only concern with a live broadcast. Any data being transmitted is open to being intercepted. Already there are Internet-based services where you can listen in to airline chatter, if you don’t have a radio in the right part of the world, and even decode in-flight diagnostic information. There are serious security and privacy concerns associated with transmitting this data live.

Current practice has that the cockpit voice recorder, which records everything said on the flight deck so investigators can hear hijackers or understand a pilot’s thought process during an emergency, is erased to protect the crew’s privacy.

“By law, cockpit voice recordings may be accessed only by investigators after an accident. When a flight arrives safely at the gate, the pilot hits the erase button,” this study points out. Pilots would have to trust that the information meant to be private would stay private, something that is increasingly difficult to do after the Snowden leaks showed just how pervasive government reach can be.

There are companies working to solve these issues, mostly working in the private aircraft space. A Canadian firm, Flyht, offers a suite of packages to monitor aircraft remotely and communicate with crews no matter where they are in the world. They even have an iPad app for ground crews to stay in the loop. And the industry is paying attention: Between March 7 and 10, Flyht’s stock price rose 25 per cent.

But commercial carriers have more aircraft and slimmer margins than many private operators.

So mostly, it’s about money. Technological barriers can be overcome. Privacy issues can be resolved. Security can be improved. But it’s all terribly expensive. Flying is still the world’s safest mode of transportation. It is orders of magnitude safer to fly across the country than to drive to work in the morning. In fact, as this article in the New York Times points out, it is often years between single accidents that result in death in North America. The United States went more than four years between fatal crashes. Spending millions to make investigating those rare crashes easier is a difficult pill for airlines to swallow.

“The aviation industry historically fights what they consider to be extraneous safety mandates, particularly if it costs them money that they cannot immediately recover,” Peter Goelz, a former top administrator for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board told CNN.

So while it would make investigations into flights like Malaysian Airlines flight 370 easier, there is little motivation in the industry to do more. And with the enormous expense, the proof of its necessity is still a long way off even as families mourn their missing loved ones.